


Attenborough's Revenge

by zuzeca



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Sex, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Chemistry, Documentaries, Dorks in Love, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 14:34:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16599755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: Venom watches nature documentaries. Riot comes back for seconds. Turns out that Netflix subscription was worth it after all.





	Attenborough's Revenge

**Author's Note:**

> When I said there would be more, that was no idle threat. xD Just a silly little bit of something set in the same universe as Conjugal Love. There's no reason for Riot specifically to come back, except I didn't currently feel like dealing with the complications that would come with involving another symbiote. Thank you for reading and enjoy!

Eight months ago, Eddie would have pegged waking up on his couch with BBC’s  _ Planet Earth  _ playing, and no memory of how he got there, as a sign of mental deterioration or budding alcoholism. Now? It’s just another Tuesday morning.

He can’t even complain too much. Venom is scrupulous about keeping his muscles and joints in shape. He’s woken up in more pain on Anne’s proper ergonomic mattress than draped bonelessly across the stuffed monstrosity of his ancient couch. And he’d promised Venom a bit of free rein ever since he found out the symbiote doesn’t really sleep much, though he  _ did _ lay down the rule about remaining in the apartment, at least for now. So he just sighs, pauses the episode. A wheeling flock of birds freezes in mid-arc. He lurches off to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Venom broods happily in the back of his mind while he fries bacon and cracks a set of eggs into the crackling pan. He’s telling Eddie all the new things he’s learned about Earth, asking for clarification that Eddie can’t offer, and about when they can go to Kenya.

“Maybe someday,” says Eddie. It’s a rote response. Yet as he turns the eggs over easy he realizes it’s a possibility. They  _ could _ go. Money’s an issue of course but there are ways. But the thought of travel no longer seems like the sharp twist of the knife of lost opportunities. Not  _ could have _ , but  _ could. _

Venom perks at his burgeoning sense of possibility.  **_Excellent. It looks as beautiful as the glowing casino buffets of your city of Las Vegas._ **

“If you try to eat an elephant, I  _ will _ set us both on fire,” says Eddie sternly. He dumps the eggs onto the plate and fishes a clean fork from the dish drainer. “God, you’re such an asshole.”

**_Assholery is a common trait among advanced species,_ ** says Venom in lofty response.  **_I have seen more of the cosmos than you could see in a hundred human lifetimes. I can confirm it is full of assholes._ **

“Dick,” says Eddie, and stuffs a fork full of bacon in his mouth to distract Venom. He chews, swallows. “Tell me about that  _ Life _ documentary.”

Venom huffs, but complies. Eddie eats mechanically, letting the buzz of Venom’s commentary wash around him. Tales of hunting and stalking, of vying for dominance, of secret, blind dramas driven by instinct. Eddie wonders, not for the first time, if Venom sees some reflection of himself.

**_All beings which experience basic drives or needs can see themselves reflected in lower organisms, Eddie. Don’t be a dick._ **

Eddie makes a face at his wall he knows Venom will read.

Venom snorts.  **_But if that was a dig at my species, you are not far off._ **

“Yeah?” He can’t keep the quaver of excited query from his voice. He’s seen before, in the half-conscious moments between wakefulness and sleep. Flashes of a bleak and distant world. The black, yawning abyss of time in the cold of hibernation, colors out of space, the hot, carnal-cerebral sensation of melding with host flesh. But their sensory systems are quite different, Eddie’s sleepy brain only capable of bending so far. And Venom doesn’t speak of his planet often.

Venom slides and curls somewhere around the vicinity of Eddie’s heart.  **_There was no room  for sentiment._ ** He sounds subdued, an edge of grief to his thoughts that brings a lump to Eddie’s throat. Eddie wonders sickly how anyone could experience something so intimate as the melding of two minds and still eschew it as  _ sentiment _ .

**_Heresy. To consider a host an equal and partner._** **_Something more than flesh to be devoured. A being with thoughts and feelings of their own. Perceived as deviant, disgusting._** Venom pauses to reflect on the wording. **_Like fucking an animal._**

Eddie’s stomach twists. “I’m not an animal!”

**_Clearly._ ** Venom roils with discomfort.  **_I said it was perception only. To want…_ ** He falls silent, and Eddie feels a bleak lump knot tight in his chest. He rubs his hand over his breastbone.

**_Used to dream._ ** It’s almost a whisper.  **_In the emptiness. Wasn’t permitted, but it didn’t stop the dreams. Of what it might be like. To join willingly, completely. Compatibility. Companionship._ **

“Love,” croaks Eddie, fingers tight around his fork and heart in his throat.

**_Never met anyone like you, Eddie._ **

“Me either.”

He  _ wants _ , an amorphous desire for intimacy that’s becoming a background radiation of his life. Feelings mushed and melded and indistinct. He wonders if it’s just side effects, his neurochemistry rewriting itself around a new drug. Venom “kisses” him, a soft caress to internal nerve endings never evolved to be touched by a lover. His brain can’t interpret the sensation as good or bad, and a feeling like piano wire tightens around his heart.

He wants to go to bed, chase the thread of desire, but there are errands to run and chores to do. The pulse of life moves on, and even an alien invasion doesn’t mean that Eddie doesn’t still have to take out the garbage. They leave the apartment and Eddie allows himself to touch the fibers of that thread at intervals throughout the day, plucking it and sending vibrations of mutual want between them.

It makes it all the sweeter when he’s finished the post-dinner washing up, wrist-deep in soapy water, and oily black fingers ooze from his forearms and creep down to thread between his own.

**_Come to bed._ **

Sometimes Venom wants to be enclosed, engulfed, touched and cosseted like an affectionate cat, and other times he wants this. Eddie’s acceptance, a symbolic welcoming he’s learned to appreciate as pleasurable in its own way from being joined indistinguishably. It had been an adjustment, to learn to make love with a body of wavering solidity, but they’ve learned cooperation here as in battle. Eddie holding up his body, Venom’s hands materializing where needed to provide additional support. Climbing higher and higher, teetering on a brink that makes Eddie’s stomach clench and his heart leap.

**_I’ve got us. Let go._ **

Eddie forces his face into his pillow and comes. It’s messy and inelegant and he can feel Venom’s delight in the back of his throat. A thick tongue licks away the sweat from his neck. He turns blindly, panting, seeking a kiss.

Venom indulges him, turning him over and blanketing his body.

**_Easy._ **

Venom’s head sinks partially beneath his breastbone, submerging like a shark and Eddie strokes his fingers above eyes like milky motor oil.

“Darling.”

Venom hums with pleasure.  **_Beloved._ **

They sleep.

It’s about four in the morning when Riot comes crashing through the alley-side window of their apartment.

To Venom’s credit, he’s got their body up and running before Eddie’s brain even has time to register the sound of shattering glass. Venom whips out a tentacle and rips the refrigerator from the wall, sending it right into Riot’s face before he catapults them out another window.

They’re running along the rooftops, an unusually noisy shadow in the night, and Eddie can already hear Riot gaining on them.

_ What the hell? I thought he was dead! _

**_Should be._ ** Venom sounds terse.  **_But we both should be._ **

_ Where do we go? _

**_Away from the populace._ ** Venom’s tone is resigned.  **_Isn’t that what you said?_ **

As promised, they’re headed north, towards the headlands and away from the city. They hit the bay and Venom doesn’t even stop, diving into the dark water with all the grace and precision of a killer whale. They plunge beneath the waves into the channel.

Eddie wouldn’t be able to see, would freeze before he made it, but Venom keeps his body warm and safe. Moving around Eddie like ink in water, rearranging the parts of himself to form a series of tubes. There’s a rush of seawater, a pulse of hydraulic pressure, and they’re rocketing through the water, propelled by siphonous jets. It’s not a trick Eddie’s seen him demonstrate before but there’s no time to think. Behind them he can hear Riot’s cacophonous path through the water, seeking them as a missile seeks a submarine.

_ Head for the western shore, _ he thinks, urgent.  _ Nothing out that way. _ Hopefully no one was hiking at four in the morning.  _ And there’s seals probably. If we can keep our lead you can nab one.  _ His stomach turns, but he knows it’ll make a difference in the coming fight.

Venom doesn’t respond verbally, but Eddie feels a rush of determination and excitement. He doesn’t have time to wonder at it before Venom’s maw opens like the cavernous gape of a deep sea fish and they crash headlong into a sea lion Eddie never saw coming.

Venom gulps it down in a whirlwind of blood and fat and bone and brain while Eddie’s still reeling from the encounter, and shoots them off under the waves. They spring from the water and scale the rocky shoreline, turning just in time to see Riot burst from the surf.

He’s...smaller than Eddie’s recollection, but bristling with spines. Eddie’s no notion of who’s lurking under the sheets of steel grey flesh, but Venom bares his teeth and snarls a warning.

**_“You,”_ ** Riot’s voice seethes with rage.  **_“Traitor. Heretic. Fornicator.”_ **

**_“Better that than a colonizer,”_ ** Venom spits back.

**_You trapped me here on this mudball,”_ ** growls Riot.  **_“No hope of signaling the others. No escape. So I swore, before I went mad in this shithole, I would paint the dirt of this planet with your vital fluids!”_ **

Venom deflects a blow from a metallic, bladed arm, sweeping to the side and scooping a rock from the ground with a flattened tendril. He spins it as he leaps back, picking up speed, and lets fly.

The rock hits Riot between the eyes and he folds around it, flesh going liquid as it absorbs the shock. It won’t kill him, or even injure him badly, but it serves as a distraction and Venom springs.

They grapple, an agonizing struggle as spines rise from Riot’s hands, stabbing through Venom’s palms in a blasphemous parody of stigmata. Venom has grown stronger, nourished by a healthy host, and Riot has weakened from his time leaping bodies and his near death, but he’s still got the edge in hand-to-hand. And as always, he knows just where to strike.

At the seams which hold them together.

The pain is unbelievable. Riot is tearing at Venom, trying to separate them with unerring instinct. Eddie’s fighting it, clinging on in an undefinable way that he feels down to his bones. Venom is shifting around him, squirming, and Eddie can taste the racing patterns of his thoughts. He feels like he’s in pain. He feels distracted. Fear surges in the pit of their stomach.

Then Venom’s maw opens, tongue uncoiling, and he spits into Riot’s face.

Eddie barely has time to register the shock he feels and wonder what the actual fuck Venom was trying to accomplish with that stunt, when Riot starts shrieking.

Riot recoils from them, clawing at his face, and Eddie suddenly realizes that the flesh between his fingers is  _ smoking _ . Smoking like it’s actually burning, holy shit.

Venom surges forward, pressing their advantage. Spray flies from their mouth, striking Riot’s writhing body and then Riot is  _ melting _ , peeling off his host, a man who looks homeless and terrorized. The amorphous mass of Riot falls to the rocky ground and Venom doesn’t waste a single moment.

Before Eddie can process the thought or object, Venom scoops Riot from the ground and swallows him down.

Eddie _feels_ _him_ wriggle on the way down.

Then Venom is withdrawing into him and Eddie is staggering on the rocks and dry heaving, his stomach empty even as his brain tells him  _ purge purge you must purge. _

“What the fuck was that?” he gasps. Another heave, even though he can’t feel Riot anymore, he’s gone gone  _ gone _ .

**_Only way to be sure._ ** Venom sounds contrite but firm.  **_Physical destruction runs the risk of fragments being left behind. Phagocytosis eliminates the risk. Mostly._ **

“ _ Mostly? _ ” Eddie’s legs give out and he ends up on his ass on the damp rocks. “Oh my god, Jesus, what the fuck?”

**_I’m sorry, Eddie._ ** Venom lingers on the edge of his consciousness, uneasy and anxious.

Eddie’s heart lurches. “It’s okay, it’s  _ fine _ . You saved our lives, I’m not complaining. Just, need a minute or so before we head back, yeah?”

He stumbles to his feet and staggers over to check Riot’s former host. The man is unconscious but alive. “We should drop him by the hospital.”

**_Of course_ ** . Venom sounds doubtful and Eddie feels a surge of guilt. The guy didn’t ask for this. He wriggles out of his still-dry sweatshirt and manages to maneuver the man’s floppy limbs into it. He doesn’t know if it’ll help, but it’s all he can think to do.

Later, they hunch on the roof of San Francisco General, watching two EMTs load the man onto a stretcher. It’s still dark, but there’s a line of light and on the horizon, fingers of color bleeding up into the velvet purple sky.

_ You want to go home? _

**_Soon._ **

_ Sorry I freaked. _

**_It’s fine. Riot was not a pleasant meal._ **

Encased in Venom, Eddie can’t do much more than push the sensation of a warm hand on his cheek at him, but Venom still melts. Their body sags down a slight bit, and warmth ripples through Eddie’s chest.

_ What was that stuff you spit on him anyway? One of your “tricks” like that axe hand trick he pulled? _

**_No. The compounds in our secretions are already venomous. I simply learned of a method to exploit our collective body chemistry to enhance them. I wasn’t certain it would work, but it did._ **

_ Huh? Holy shit, you made that stuff out of us? And learned? Where? _

Venom pushes an image at him. A shot from one of the BBC programs, a little beetle trundling along. The colorful body arches, flexing, hot spray flying from the tip of its abdomen to strike a menacing spider. A bombardier, Eddie recalls vaguely, powerful chemical artillery in miniature.

**_Your body produces hydrogen peroxide as a metabolic byproduct. We use aromatic compounds similar to quinones to harden parts of our mass to form structures_ ** .  **_The resulting reaction is exothermic, and explosive._ **

_ Oh my god. You figured out how to make us spit hot poison by watching Netflix? _

A flicker of embarrassment.  **_We have never been as good at mass formation as Riot. Our defensive structures are meant to be hard, like his offensive ones. But we produce sufficient quantities of the compound to combine with yours._ **

_ Oh. I guess...I guess we really are well suited to each other, aren’t we? _

Warmth surges around Eddie, a full-body sensation that’s like a hug and not like one at all.

**_Yes, Eddie. Yes we are._ **

**Author's Note:**

> The seed for this idea came from a glorious afternoon spent wandering the Audubon Insectarium and Butterfly Garden with a head full of thoughts about alien symbiotes. If you are ever in New Orleans, Louisiana, I highly recommend stopping by, it's quite enjoyable. While I did fudge a little bit on the chemistry specifics, Venom's boiling spit trick is essentially the same one employed by the [bombardier beetle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle). Which involves the combination of hydrogen peroxide (one byproduct of human metabolism) and hydroquinone, a chemical derived from some of the same precursors of which are used by insects to sclerotize and strengthen their exoskeleton. I know the symbiotes can make themselves whatever color they please, but I liked the idea of Venom's dark color having some kind of role beyond him being edgy. xD


End file.
